Field of the Invention
This invention relates to teaching tools for the teaching, learning, and assessing of student understanding of Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) subjects, and, more particularly, relates to tools which utilize a touch sensitive computer screen to teach, learn, and assess student understanding of STEM subjects.
Description of Related Art
In the field of education, devices or systems of cooperating devices which are used to enhance teaching and learning are commonly referred to as either teaching tools or teaching interventions. Furthermore, the evaluation of certain aspects of an educational process, such as subject matter questions or achievement tests administered to students, is commonly referred to as an assessment.
Currently, various tools or interventions, as they are called in the art, are used to teach and motivate the learning of mathematical and physical concepts. These tools include chalkboard, whiteboard, graphing calculator, personal computers, pen-enabled tablet computers, Interactive Whiteboards (IWB), computational mathematics engines, concept visualization software tools, and the experimental laboratory. Whereas each of these tools individually engages students in its own way, a physical disconnect exists between them. For example, a graphing calculator is separate and distinct from a chalkboard and each of these tools requires different expertise to use. When a teacher switches from tool to tool, the change interrupts the flow of teaching and distracts students.
Recently, mobile tablets with touch sensitive screens (for example, iPar devices, Android™ devices, and similar devices), because of their low cost, are becoming ubiquitous in classroom environments. Teachers and students are using the didactic features of tablets to teach and learn STEM subjects wherein notation is an important requirement. For example, entering a math notation, such as
      x    =                            -          b                ±                                            b              2                        -                          4              ⁢              a              ⁢                                                          ⁢              c                                                  2        ⁢        a              ,is more difficult and time consuming when entering these types of expressions into a computer using a keyboard and mouse compared to a user inputting the touch sensitive screen of a tablet with a stylus or fingertip, as if using paper and pencil.
Teachers of STEM subjects recognize the need for frequent assessments of student progress in understanding the principles being taught and teachers administer such assessments or quizzes in class even though they usually lead to distracting tool changes. For example, when a teacher is teaching a class using one or more of the teaching tools such as those mentioned above and spontaneously decides to ascertain whether the students are grasping what is being taught, the teacher does not have a convenient means by which to measure simultaneously the understanding of all of the students in the class. In order to assess all of the students, the teacher typically asks the students to provide a handwritten answer to a question. This requires the students to use a paper and pencil to answer the question and requires the teacher to collect and evaluate the answers, a process which is time consuming and interrupts the flow of teaching. A tool is needed in the art which minimizes these interruptions in the flow of teaching and, in particular, enables teachers to evaluate frequently class progress in understanding STEM principles without having to switch tools to make the assessments.
What follows are descriptions of products which are known in the industry and which are currently available as computerized teaching interventions for the teaching of STEM subjects:
Graphing calculators have been widely adopted in classrooms because of their computational power, but they require significant training before users (both students and teachers) become experts at finding the complicated sequence of button pushes needed to solve and graph problems.
Microsoft Math™ is graphing calculator software targeted toward use in math education. Even though its interface is tablet PC enabled and incorporates rudimentary entry of handwritten math, it is not a fully pen-centric application. The application requires keyboard entry for effective use. Also, the Microsoft Math™ software product does not offer ease of entry of mathematical notation, interface commands and free-form drawings.
XThink's MathJournal™ is a Tablet PC application for the type of mathematical problem solving that is performed by engineers and scientists rather than students. It focuses on functionality rather than on an uninterrupted teaching experience.
Interactive Physics™ and The Geometer's SketchPad™ require users to learn an unfamiliar WIMP-based (Windows, Icons, Menu's, Pointers) visual language. This unfamiliar, as compared to pencil and paper, style of interaction makes these programs inaccessible to many casual users, and presents significant usage barriers for classroom and problem solving settings.
Systems such as Mathematica™, Maple™, Matlab™, and MathCar are focused primarily on entering mathematics for computation, symbolic mathematics, and illustration. These tools require complex scripting languages for mathematical entry. Although these languages use mathematical notation, they are one dimensional and require unconventional keyboard-based entry which is much less intuitive than using 2D handwritten mathematics. None of these systems let the user create diagrams on the screen of a computer in a natural pencil-and-paper style.
FluidMath™ provides a system for the teaching and learning of STEM subjects through the use of handwritten input into pen-enabled computers. FluidMath™ enables the user of a tablet PC to create, solve, and explore STEM principles all in his own handwriting as if working with pencil and paper. However, FluidMath™ does not teach a system which can administer student assessments as disclosed in the present invention.
None of the systems, devices and software described above provides a teaching intervention which has the computer functionality to interpret answers to assessments which are handwritten with standard math notation on the screen of a pen-enabled computer in order to provide a quick in-class assessment for the teacher to evaluate a class's understanding of STEM principles as they are being taught in class. Finally, none of the aforementioned systems, devices and software has the computer functionality to administer periodic tests in class as well as homework assignments and general achievement tests, and collect students' handwritten solutions, evaluate the students' answers presented in handwritten standard math notation and establish automated performance records for each student.
There are also a number of U.S. patents which disclose teaching systems and methods. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,176,520 which issued to Eric Hamilton on Jan. 5, 1993, discloses a computer-assisted instructional information delivery system having at least two stations—one station for an instructor and one or more stations for students. An interactive monitor is positioned in each station. Each interactive monitor displays instructional information in visual form as inputted by a stylus or light pen on the interactive monitor. A network communication system operated by a central processing unit and corresponding software communicates the instructional information from the stylus as inputted on one of the interactive monitors and selectively displays the instructional information simultaneously and concurrently onto any or all of the interactive monitors of the stations.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,760,748, which issued to Omar Hakim on Jul. 6, 2004, discloses an interactive electronic instructional system as a teaching interface between a teacher and students where data is transmitted from the teacher's terminal to the students' terminals. The data is received at the student terminals and is separated into execution data and instructional data. The student terminals are grouped into teams allowing student teams to interact with a group decision. This encourages team participation by shy or otherwise reluctant students. Team answer data is transmitted from one of the student terminals in the team to the teacher's terminal. The teacher monitors team answer data to infer class progress towards a goal. The teacher may modify the instructional data based on the progress.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,213,211, which issued to Sanders et al. on May 1, 2007, discloses a system for knowledge transfer in a group setting and comprises a plurality of participant work areas and a moderator work area. Each of the plurality of participant work areas has at least one corresponding participant input-device, and each of the participant input-devices is adapted to define participant images that are then included on the corresponding participant work area. The moderator work area comprises at least one moderator input-device. The at least one moderator input-device is adapted to define moderator images that are then included on the moderator work area and to select moderator images that are then simultaneously included on each of the plurality of participant work areas. The moderator input-device is further adapted to select participant images from any of the plurality of participant work areas that are then included on the moderator work area.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,466,958, which issued to Dunk et al. on Dec. 16, 2008, discloses an on-line teaching and learning system with rapid change-by-change or real-time reinforcement of student responses to math questions, including monitoring by the teacher of the actual responses as well as their correctness. Equations or expressions are entered by selecting one or more symbols from a menu, selecting one or more symbols using buttons in the application, using one or more hotkeys, and/or entering information in a character bases syntax.
The above-noted products and U.S. patents do not disclose systems which enable teachers to combine the use of pen-enabled computers and handwritten input of math notation to minimize interruptions in the flow of teaching when assessing students' understanding of STEM principles. There is needed in the art a means wherein a teacher can administer an in-class assessment to students using tablet PCs and have the students' handwritten answers automatically collected and evaluated by the intervention, thereby providing a teacher with an in-class report regarding student progress. Finally, there is needed in the art an intervention which can be used to administer homework assignments and periodic tests to the users of pen-enabled computers linked on a network, collect via the network the answers which are handwritten by the users on the screens of their computers, interpret the answers, judge whether they are right or wrong and produce student performance records.